Reading graphic novels in school: texts, contexts and the interpretive work of critical reading

Abstract

This paper uses the example of an extra-curricular Graphic Novel Reading Group in order to explore the institutional critical reading practices that take place in English classrooms in the senior years of secondary school. Drawing on Stanley Fish’s theory of interpretive communities, it questions the restrictive interpretive strategies applied to literary texts in curriculum English. By looking closely at the interpretive strategies pupils apply to a different kind of text (graphic novels) in an alternative context (an extra-curricular space), the paper suggests that there may be other ways of engaging with text that pupils find less alienating, more pleasurable and less reminiscent of ‘work’.